Doctor Who – Smith and Jones

This past Saturday, March 31st 2007, Doctor Who’s 3rd series premiere, “Smith and Jones”, aired on BBC One. This marks an important turning point in the series, as the Doctor — no longer with Rose, his counterpart for the past 2 seasons — has now found a new companion in Martha Jones.

Please note: the following episode summary contains spoilers. Those who wish to see the show for themselves need to either put on an eye patch and get online, or wait until their local affiliates air this series.

The episode is set in near-present day England, where a young Martha is studying to be a real Doctor (the kind that cure people, not the kind that fly around in police boxes). The Doctor investigates a suspicous hospital, which leads him to Martha. As rain begins to pour upwards, the hospital is transported to the moon!

Contained by a forcefield with a depleting supply of oxygen, the Doctor and Martha quickly discover that the building has been moved for jurisdictional reasons by an alien race known as the Judoon — mercanaries in search of a non human amongst the hospital’s staff and patients. This is good for the humans, but bad for our Doctor.

The fugitive is an “internal shapeshifting plasmavore”, who drinks the blood of humans in order to duplicate both the internal and external appearance of her victims. Masquerading as a little old lady, “Florence” and her all-leather henchmen plan on overloading an MRI machine to incapacitate the Judoon and, in the process, kill half the Earth’s population.

Getting straight to the point with his new partner-in-time, the Doctor takes a pause in the action for some face (to face) time. There was probably some tongue, because he end up passing a trace of his alien DNA to his unsuspecting cohort, throwing the Judoon off his trail.

Why would he want to do that? So that he can trick Florence into thinking he’s human, drink his blood, and have her finally appear alien to the Judoon’s scans. In the process, the Doctor fries his precious sonic screwdriver, loses his shoes, and nearly dies. (what, so soon?) The Judoon take the bait, kill the shapeshifting fiend, and leave the human race on the brink of destruction because it’s “not our jurisdiction.”

Using her real Doctor powers, Martha ressusitates the Doctor in the nick of time to disable the rogue MRI machine just as the hospital is transported back to Earth, where air is plentiful and the near dead hospital staff and patients can return to their happy lives.

Martha is not so happy. Her family is a mess and get into a huge fight which seems commonplace. Enter our Doctor, now wearing shoes and sporting a fancy new sonic screwdriver. As is expected, he propositions Martha (as he does all women) and asks her to accompany him for what he promises is just one trip.

aDam’s thoughts:

I’m glad to see Martha and the Doctor’s chemistry is working quite well. As a medical professional Martha is quite a different character both in physical appearance and in general attitude to Rose the shop girl. This is pretty much the only way they could approach the situation as Billie Piper did such a great job that to try to replace her would be impossible. The only thing they could do was, as when David Tenant came on board as the new Doctor, take the role in a completely different direction. Emulating what’s already been done so well is futile but breaking new ground is always refreshing.

I’m getting the feeling, and some fans will dissagree, that the romantic relationship between the Doctor and Martha is a lot less subdued as it was with Rose. He’s already kissed her, granted he had a good reason, and is quite open about the fact that he’s smitten with her. She is also clearly interested in him. Perhaps the Doctor will learn from his missed oppurtunities with Rose and be more honest with his feelings this time around or, perhaps, we’ll be doing the exact same song and dance we’re used to. Only time will tell.

A number of “Vote Saxon” signs can be seen in this episode. Could this be this year’s recurring theme for the season in the style of “Bad Wolf” for season 1 or “Torchwood” for season 2.

TheOrange’s thoughts:

I’m used to the old show, where companions would come and go, overlap, and — a lot of the time — generally not do very much other than act woodenly, so it’s nice to see characters with depth who actually have things to do. Who knows how long it was between this episode and the Runaway Bride? It could have been months… weeks… decades… such things are irrelevant to a Time Lord. I find the thought that he might have had time to relax after 26 episodes (and two Christmas specials) very appealing.

It wasn’t really until the 8th Doctor that our protagonist ever showed any romantic interest in any of his non-Gallifreyan compatriots, and while at first I sort of resented the idea that the women he asks onboard are only candidates for breedstock, he is getting up there in years — after a millenium of travel in time and space, most Time Lords probably start thinking of settling down. Oh, and there’s that whole problem of the genocide of his race… I can see why he’d want to get his mack on so late in the game.

Did anyone catch the reference to Martha’s “cousin” at Canary Wharf? She’s actually referring to Freema Agyeman’s previous role as a Torchwood 1 operative during the last two episodes of the previous series. Nice nod there, fellas!

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